They crossed the verandah and entered the house, still without meeting a soul. Here again all was desolation. Everything of value seemed to be gone, and the furniture was broken and knocked about. The only things left uninjured were the glass bottles containing the natural history specimens, which still remained untouched on their shelves. The door into the next room was ajar, and a kerosene lamp was burning itself out on the table, filling the air with its pungent odour as the flame flickered, recovered itself, and sank again. Glancing into the semi-darkness, the intruders could make out the form of the doctor, lying half-dressed across his bed, the lamp-light gleaming on the barrel of a revolver in his hand.
Somewhat reassured by the sight, they advanced and pushed the door wide open, then recoiled precipitately. The face which met their view was that of a dead man—of one who had died in the extremest agony. The protruding eyeballs, the lips drawn back to the gums, the black and swollen tongue, all testified to the sufferer’s having endured the utmost torments of thirst.
Ashamed of their momentary panic, Stratford and Dick, putting a strong constraint upon themselves, entered the room and lifted the corpse, unclasping the rigid hand from the revolver.
“They did poison him, then!” said Dick, fiercely. “Well, we will have Fath-ud-Din’s blood for this.”
“How?” asked Stratford. “When was he poisoned? Was it at dinner last night, or had his servants poisoned the water in the filter? If young Fath-ud-Din and Hicks are both unhurt, we can never prove that it wasn’t that. It has been very smartly managed.”
“Here is a piece of paper and a pencil,” said Dick, handing them to him. “He must have been writing as he lay.”
“Look here,” said Stratford, holding out the paper after glancing through it, “the poor fellow has put down his symptoms and the remedies he tried, as a guide to us. He wrote at intervals, evidently. You see, after recording his symptoms twice, he says, ‘Servants gathered round the door watching me. Refuse to bring water.’ Then more symptoms, and then, ‘Servants are looting the house. Afraid to touch collection.’ Now you see the writing becomes much weaker. ‘Ask Miss Keeling to keep collection in memory of me. Take my mother back the Bible she gave me. Good-bye all. Take care of Miss Keeling; they will strike at her next—the only doctor left. God have mercy——’ It breaks off there, you notice, with a scrawl right across the page. The pencil must have dropped from his hand. To think what the poor fellow must have been enduring all alone in the night, with those fiends gloating over him!”
They stood up on either side of the dead man and looked at each other. Both were men who would not have flinched in the hottest fight, and yet each now saw reflected in the other’s eyes the unutterable horror of his own. What chance was there of success against a foe who fought with such weapons as this? Stratford was the first to speak.
“I must go over and get the Chief to come,” he said. “Will you stay here with—him? I won’t be longer than I can help.”
Dick nodded, and he went off swiftly. For a few moments Dick sat still, staring fixedly at the distorted face of the man who had been a true comrade and good friend to him during the last few months. Then he pushed back the box on which he had been sitting, and began to walk up and down the room, averting his eyes from the dreadful thing on the bed.